Relax, it's National Stress Out Week

Reporter Tom Kisken asks Ventura County residents how they deal with stress.

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Leo Zendejas studies in the Island Cafe during a lunch break Monday at CSU Channel Islands in Camarillo.

Ventura County Star

The pit of tension deep in the gut comes after the all-night cram sessions of a midterm blitz that can bring four exams, one after another.

It hits Leo Zendejas of Santa Paula in the exam room as he clutches his pencil and waits for what seems like forever for the professor to hand out the tests.

"I get that butterfly in my stomach," said Zendejas, who is studying history at CSU Channel Islands in Camarillo. "I just try to remember everything in my head. I just want to get it over."

More than seven of 10 people say they endure enough stress to interfere at least moderately with their lives. About three of 10 with daily stress take medicine to cope. About the same percentage say they've suffered an anxiety or panic attack.

The numbers come from the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, an advocacy and education group that dubbed Sunday the beginning of National Stress Out Week. The annual campaign aims to show the pervasiveness of stress and offer ways to cope.

The gnawing pressure emerges at home, at jobs, even on the beach or golf course. But in some places, anxiety percolates with more intensity.

On Monday morning at a California Department of Motor Vehicles office in Ventura, people waited in a serpentine line. Carrying folders of paperwork, they came to register cars, reinstate licenses pulled because of child support issues and prove they're fit to drive.

When they arrived at the front of the line, they were told the computers were shut down. Yes, stress was here.

"You can see it on people's faces," Gary Stone said.

The 41-year-old Oxnard-area resident knows anxiety. About 10 years ago, he was treated for a brain tumor that a doctor suggested may have been linked to the nonstop demands of his job running a security company dedicated to celebrities and business executives. Now he's going through a divorce after 18 years of marriage, and his head sometimes hurts again.

"I think if people could reduce (stress) to a minimum, their health would be majorly affected," he said.

Stone moved to the beach in part to offer balance to his life. He plays semipro racquetball. He eats less red and more green. He spends more time with his Korean mastiffs — George and Maude.

"I think I'm doing well. It's very easy to fall back, to let it fall back into your body," he said of stress. "But I feel like I've made some major changes."

Barry Orr of Ventura is convinced stress affected his health, too, sending him to the emergency room after he broke out in a deep sweat and passed out. He dealt with the source of the problem by quitting his job.

"Every day was: 'Do I want to stay here working anymore, or do I want to stay home?' " Orr said. "It felt bad."

Compare that with the DMV, and suddenly the waiting and the lines don't seem so bad.

"It's nothing," Orr said.Robert Duhamell works in Squaw Valley in the winter, operating chair lifts at the ski resort and snowboarding whenever he can. In the summer, he's an outdoor educator and trail crew leader for an outdoors training group called Rocky Mountain Youth Corps.

He surfs maybe three days a week, sometimes journeying from his home in Davis to Ventura's Surfers Point. That's where he was Monday, sitting in the back of his Chevy Astro van, drinking coffee made on a camp stove and getting ready to put on his wet suit.

"I try to make my life low-stress," he said.

He lives on about $20,000 a year and says money equals more stress. When anxiety emerges — maybe from college students in the youth corps who have trouble surviving without Facebook — he connects with nature. One way is the ocean.

"As soon as the water goes over you, you can feel all the problems that built up. You feel that wash away," he said. "I like to call this the fake world. When I go into nature, that's the real world."

People call Debbie Castro when they feel suicidal, have been assaulted or witnessed someone being shot. She's worked for seven years as a dispatcher at the Ventura County Sheriff's Office.

"Any time you pick up the line, you don't know what you're going to get," she said. "People who call 911 are not calling because they're having a good day."

Castro has learned to deal with it and said the intense training program that can last as long as a year was more stressful than the job. And if she still has to fight the feeling of being responsible for a caller who's trying to revive a drowned child, she also reminds herself the only control she has is in doing her job.

"You've been trained so well. You have that in you," she said. "You just do what you need to do."

When the stress is highest, Castro will remind herself to breathe. She focuses on the moment, processing it all later. And if one call is especially traumatic, she deals with it and moves on.

"I go to the next call," she said.

Midterms are over at CSU Channel Islands. But that means time is evaporating for final projects, final papers and another round of exams. The stress can push students to craft complex documents that list every upcoming assignment and allot time.

But sometimes it's too much. Some students deal with it by not dealing with it. Instead of doing more, they do less.

"It's like I would have this presentation on Monday, a test on Tuesday and a midterm Friday," sophomore Stephanie Soriano said. "Overwhelmed."

Zendejas thinks wrestling competitively for 10 years helps him deal with the student stress. He relies on weight training and running. He sees the stress as a motivator and can't envision it ever pinning him.